Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an intelligent health care management system, and more particularly to a system, method and device for maintaining, updating, and intelligently analyzing patient information to provide diagnostic and therapeutic information.
Related Art
Physicians have long maintained a medical record for each patient. These medical records have conventionally resided at the physician's office in a records area. When a patient changes physicians, unfortunately, absent making a copy of the patient's medical records and transporting the copy to the next physician, there is no easy way to provide a new physician access to the patient's prior medical history.
Electronic medical records have been developed to help heath care providers in caring for their patients. Unfortunately, since no standards exist, compatibility, exchangeability and accessibility of medical information is not conventionally possible among health care providers.
Conventionally, there are many databases around the world with patients' medical records, stored and locked up in proprietary formats, in doctor's offices, hospitals, government agencies, or third party payer's warehouses that are not readily accessible to a patient, or the patient's current physician. While this medical information may be very useful in the management of the patient, there is no conventionally available method for the medical information to reach the entities that could help that patient (e.g., physician, hospital, public and provide entities, offices, and thirty party payers) in a timely fashion, as would be needed, particularly in the case of emergency patient care needs.
Efforts to attempt to bring standardization of medical records in a universal medical record form and electronic medical record systems have made access to medical information easier. However, the main problem of obtaining data when the physician, hospital, insurance company, or the patient needs it, in a timely fashion, has remained an obstacle. Most medical records are currently stored in a doctor's office, hospital, or a database that are not always accessible to the patient when the patient or patient's health care giver need the information.
While most records may be in a pbysician's office or a hospital, and some few medical records are stored in an electronic or digital medical record system, very few doctors, patients, hospitals, or insurance providers have access to these medical records in an urgent setting, especially if the patient is traveling, away from the patient's residence and normal health care provider.
Another problem with conventional electronic medical records is that conventional medical record databases are generally redundant and incomplete. Updating and maintaining the databases is labor intensive and usually the database serves certain designated purposes for which it was programmed rather than being a complete medical record for the patient. For example a hospital may contain several databases for a patient's medical records, one designed for accounting/billing, another relating to recording patient symptoms, and others for laboratory results, for example.
Current physicians' lack of access to a patient's past medical records is a leading challenge in treating patients referred for care by a consultant. Quite often the patient's medical record is in the primary care provider's office and is thus inaccessible to the current physician handling the referral. For numerous reasons, such as office closings or inability to locate the chart in a timely manner, duplicate testing, and diagnosis may occur as a result of lack of access to critical medical information of the patient. Repetitive testing may often be performed, particularly in the case of urgent therapy, where lack of access to this information may be most critical, such as, for preoperative surgical clearance.
Access to information is also hindered by the fact that even when having access to pertinent medical information, the sheer volume of information in conventional records makes cumbersome the access of critical information from medical records. A better way of obtaining summarized, merged, up to date information about a patient is not available to a patient or the patient's health care providers, using conventional systems.
Further, since the drafting of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, prescription error reduction has become one of the important mandates for the medical industry as well as for the government and private health care sectors to improve health care delivery. Also, laboratory results frequently require changing of the medication regimens to avoid potential toxicities, drug interactions and side effects for the patients. The dispersion of a patient's medical records can make it difficult to identify and correct such potential undesirable drug interactions. Even in cases where all of the relevant records are co-located, a physician or pharmacist may still miss the potentially harmful interactions.
Further, the distribution and inaccessibility of a patient's whole health and medical record, combined with limited time for office visits, may prevent a treating health care provider from being able to identify secondary issues that may aid in diagnosis and treatment.
What is needed is a system, method, and computer program product which may be adapted to provide a patient a portable, digital medical record, which may be carried by the patient so access to the patient's medical information will always be available. This previously unfulfilled need is particularly in demand in emergency situations, when a health care provider has only a limited time to diagnose an illness and provide care for a patient, in life threatening peril.